UESP Forums

Hi all, first time posting here after years away. I've decided to replay Daggerfall, using Ancestral Ghost's new Daggerfall Setup routine, to see if I can finally finish a playthrough. But I'm encountering a critical, random, game-killing bug, and it's not something I ever remember encountering before. I'm hoping someone here can shed some light on this. I've seen the problem reported elsewhere (including here), with no solution posted, but I've been experimenting and I have more information than has been included in other reports.

The problem is this: at some point, seemingly randomly, the game simply decides that the next quest completed by the player will freeze the game. Doesn't matter which quest, doesn't matter which faction, doesn't matter how it's completed; when the quest finishes, boom, game over. This would be no big deal, just another bug in a game rife with bugs, except that it affects all current save files simultaneously. Reloading a save from several quests ago does nothing, and the next quest that is accepted results in the same freeze. It's basically a career-killer for any characters in any current save files.

Some things that I have found while experimenting:

* It happens regardless of how the quest is completed, either successfully or unsuccessfully. (So no simply "skipping" the quest by letting the time run out.)
* It happens regardless of the faction giving the quest, or which region of the map the quest is assigned.
* It happens regardless of the precise quest that is assigned.
* Refusing quests doesn't help. No matter how many quests I refuse, or how much time goes by, the very next quest I undertake experiences this crash.
* Loading previous saved games does nothing. When I load a game saved 3 quests ago, for instance, and then accept a new quest, the crash happens.
* Reinstalling the game does nothing. The same exact thing occurs when I copy the saved game files back and resume play.
* This does NOT happen immediately when I start a new character. Everything seems fine for a while, until the issue decides to strike that character as well. This has happened with two (of two) characters I've created with the new Daggerfall Setup installation, and it happened at different points in each character's career. The characters were at different levels, with different factions & ranks, completely different inventories, etc.

Basically, as summarized above, it's like the game just randomly decides "okay, you've had enough quests. The next one will end your game", for no reason whatsoever. The only way to escape the bug is to create a new character...until it strikes that character as well. There's no way out.

I don't understand what might be causing this. On the one hand, the fact that starting a new character "resets" the issue makes me think that the problem is tied to the character, rather than to the game itself. Perhaps a corruption creeps into the character files, somehow. But on the other hand, the fact that it strikes all saved games simultaneously, rather than the corruption hitting one saved game and then getting copied to the other slots, makes me think that it's something about the game itself. I don't know, it doesn't make any sense to me.

Just one other thing potentially of note: I've noticed that if I load one of these fatally corrupted games and fast-travel for a long time, approximately 200 days, the game will also freeze. The exact number of days is 100% consistent within each game slot, and seems to be consistent between game slots as well; on one of my save slots it occurs after 184 days of travel (consistently), on an earlier save slot it occurs after 194 days (consistently), etc., meaning it's probably a single constant assigned to each slot. Whereas with "clean" saved game slots, I've successfully traveled over 500 days with no problems.

So, it's like the game randomly decides "okay, you've had enough quests, and you've done enough traveling; your game is over after your next quest or ~200 days of traveling, whichever comes first". HELP!

I never experienced these issue(s) previous to the new Daggerfall Setup bundle, despite hundreds of playtime hours logged with earlier installations. And I've seen others report this as well, with the new bundle. So, if no one has any solutions, I think I'm going to try reinstalling the game without the Daggerfall Setup, using a different installation and configuring DOSBox manually and all that...except I've totally forgotten how to do it. :/ (Can someone help there as well?)

Many many thanks to all.

Have you tried running the FIXSAVE utility?

Yep, I've tried it. That's usually my first attempted remedy. It had no effect.

Curiously, I have yet to experience a post-2.13 problem that has been at all affected by FixSave.

Hi, I think I may have found a solution.

I also experienced the same quest bug a month ago or so, using version 2.7 of DaggerfallSetup. I tried running without the unofficial patches as well as with them, but neither setting worked to solve the issue. I could always replicate the bug on completion of the 5th quest (could be any quest apparently). I noticed that there was a new release (2.7a) but as far as I know no changes were made to the unofficial patches (which are believed to be the source of the problem) or any of the other game files.

I experimented again, using different installation settings on this new release and found that the game would crash on any setting if I canceled the tutorial at the beginning of the game. I never knew this was possible (I always clicked yes on the prompt). Then I decided to mess with the compatibility settings on the shortcut to Daggerfall (I'm running under Windows 8, but there are reports that the bug also happens under Windows 7). As it turns out, setting the shortcut to compatibility mode for Windows XP service pack 3 solved the crash at the tutorial prompt. Moreover, I have already completed over 5 quests and the game has yet to crash on accepting a quest reward.

Right now I'm running the game flawlessly with all the unofficial bug fixes installed. Maybe downloading the latest release and changing the compatibility settings will work for you too. The only issue is that doing so changes the path the game uses to look for your saves (or at least it makes saves made under other compatibility settings disappear from the load/save menu). I don't know if the bug is embeded in saves, so maybe starting from the beginning is your only option.